President OLiar: “What We Said Was You Can Keep It If It Hasn’t Changed Since The Law Passed”

Obama: “What We Said Was You Can Keep It If It Hasn’t Changed Since The Law Passed”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan.

But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.

If we had allowed these old plans to be downgraded, or sold to new enrollees once the law had already passed, then we would have broken an even more important promise — making sure Americans gain access to health care that doesn’t leave them one illness away from financial ruin. The bottom line is that we are making the insurance market better for everybody and that’s the right thing to do. (Organizing for Action campaign event, November 4, 2013)